Queen of Roses
by LePetitPappillon
Summary: Something was killing her. It was this acidic black emotion that took root in her heart and grew into her esophagus upward, like an ugly purple sunflower. The only thing that helped was standing outside in her tiny little flower box, making wishes on the dead butterflies that were eaten by those awful black birds.
1. Chapter 1

The Queen sat in her garden with her servant Gilbert, watching the butterflies float from flower to flower, collecting pollen. They were the enormous kind; the kind with wide wings and a hundred brilliant, outstanding colors. Like sleek black and sapphire blue. Some were red and orange with vibrant white spots and others were stark yellow. Each and every one of those large, spectacular creatures shined like jewels against the deep green vines and light pink buds that lined the wall. But the plant life only covered about the first twenty bricks.

The walls themselves stretched up terribly high, almost reaching The King's tower that hovered over The Queen's garden. It was connected with the castle on one side and was surrounded by those barriers of the dark grey stone on the other three sides.

When the queen tried to look up and find her husband in the tower, her eyes would fill up with harsh, violent sunshine and it was impossible to see anything but heavy and hostile light. But then, her pretty emerald green stare found her flowers again and then they found Gilbert again. And her pale skin would fill up with a gentle and rosy pink.

Every day, she tended to her collection of roses and every day, Gilbert watched in silence. He was respectful and sewed his lips shut. But at the same time, this activity flooded his mind with a reserve of questions he wasn't allowed to ask. So usually, he'd end up working and chewing up his lips like a salty sweet meat until the queen would say something to him first.

Today she said: "Do you like the red roses or the white roses, Gilbert?"

And Gilbert answered: "I don't know. I never really thought about it."

Then there was a long pause as the queen cleared away the dead leaves that had fallen onto the rich black soil. The rose bushes flourished when she cleaned them up, and almost immediately—the buds glittered like those silky colored butterflies drinking up The Queen's nectar and fluttering around nervously.

"I guess I like the red ones." The servant set a collection of fingers through his snow white hair. "Red is my favorite color."

"I'm not surprised at all."

The Queen rose up, after gently clipping a ruby rose from that pleasant bush and set it in the pocket of Gilbert's shirt. And the sleeve of her wondrous pink dress brushed ever so slightly against his heart strings, as if her fingers were strumming a harp. Then those heavy green eyes burned a passionate hole in the grass.

They stayed a long damn time.

The heels of her shoes made holes in the ground.

"Well, I've finished my gardening. Please come with me."

"Sure."

And so The Queen and Gilbert escaped back into the palace, leaving the woman's small box bursting with screaming, happy plant life.


	2. Chapter 2

It went on the same way forever. Royalty was calculated in careful routines and heavy tradition that caked The Queen and King's faces white. The pair would wake up, eat breakfast, attend to business and from there Elizaveta would go outside, tend to her garden for an hour, and read. Until her husband gave her something to do. Then there was lunch. And eventually dinner.

The days followed a formula of similar chemicals. Sometimes, there would be additional oxygen. Sometimes addition hydrogen dioxide and acid. But those were all pieces to be clicked into place by the careful, wrinkled hands of the all mighty God.

And so slowly, as was a piece of the grand reaction, the summer changed to fall.

That day, The Queen was dressed in dull grey.

And instead of tending to the plants, to keep their thick veins and skin color healthy, she sat in her rocking chair and wore her heavy silver crown. While her eyes darted in no particular direction, but certainly into those impossible grey bricks.

Most of the butterflies had gone. But one remained, with glorious spots like a leopard's coat and radical blue-green eyes written on either side of its wings. They were outlined in heavy black liner, like pretty coal.

And this butterfly collected its pollen and stole part of The Queen's garden. But it was allowed to, because it was rainbow spotted and impossibly beautiful.

"How dreadful."

Then, a large black crow went crashing from the sky. Huge, ugly wings leaving a spatter of greasy feathers on the grass. There was its wretched noise—an infernal cawing that wrote out infidelity as the beak crushed the butterfly's head.

After the murder, it tore back into the sky, leaving shredded remains of luminescent wings with one or two of its oily feathers.

That must have been the last butterfly either one of them saw for a while.

"Gilbert." The Queen said.

"Yes, My Lady?"

"Don't call me 'My Lady' anymore." And she stood up on her tired knees and walked back inside, that long train of silken grey following closely behind her, as if it were a needy child. Even in those comparatively thin castle lights, The Queen's crown of metal roses glowed like a halo.

Now Queen Elizaveta was sitting in her royal purple chair in her royal purple parlor with whom else but Gilbert at her side?

"Gilbert." The Queen said.

"Yes, Queen Elizaveta?"

"You leave here every night. What is it like?"

"The town?"

Then there was one of those long, heavy pauses that forced Gilbert to breathe in the dust of the room. There was just one window crammed into the eastern wall, clouded up by purple and golden curtains.

The whole damn place smelled like a library.

"Yes. The town."

"It's fine." Gilbert had to string a few sentences together. It was hard to know exactly what to say to one of the owners of the entire world. "It's nice around here. There's a bunch of super expensive stores and everyone lives in a huge house."

"How about where you live?"

"It's still nice." There it was again, that mute gasp for air. And just for a moment, his eyes got caught in the froth of Queen Elizaveta's dress. Now, it was a frowning blue that looked like an angry patch of ocean. Where the froth spits on top of the water and the waves are at least ten feet high.

"You can be honest with me."

But before Gilbert could say anymore, Queen Elizaveta spoke again.

"My husband is a cheapskate; I know. I've seen him wear patched underwear, and it was cheap in the first place."

The servant grinned his crooked grin and it made The Queen grin as well.

"No; there must be trouble out there somewhere. This kingdom can't be prefect because we own it. Well—because my husband owns it. Sometimes I wonder how I became queen. My family was high class, but not anywhere near the level of royalty. But I met Roderich—I'm sorry. _The King_. And somehow, for some reason, he decided he loved me dearly. Even though he was surrounded by women twice as intelligent, twice as beautiful, twice as well versed—and the worst part is—"

But that was where Queen Elizaveta stopped. Before she ran herself off that cliff of no return. Words didn't come tied to receipts. You couldn't give them or get them back.

This was like screaming into a gorge.

The clock ticked gently near the door. Then there was the smell of dust again.

"You're the most beautiful, intelligent, well-versed, well-dressed queen there ever was. Just because those other tarts had richer parents or more royal blood or whatever doesn't mean they would have been better. That's why The King chose you in the first place."

Queen Elizaveta laughed. "Thank you, Gilbert."

And then she laughed a little too long.

"Well—I think I'm going to drown myself in cake and coffee. Thank you for speaking with me. And thank you for calling me Queen Elizaveta."

With that, the morose statue of The Woman moved out of her chair, with joints popping and muscles stretching to leave Gilbert where he was in the chair across from where she sat. Then, she did something she wasn't allowed to do and stared softly at her servant. The way a cat would when it looks at something lovingly. Her hand rested on the door knob and after several seconds too long, she finally opened it and left.

From the outside, her dress shuffled away. It sounded as if she was stepping on fallen leaves.

Gilbert's brows actively furrowed.


	3. Chapter 3

King Roderich had tethered himself around the entirety of Queen Elizaveta's being. His soft, unexpectedly heavy eyelashes brushed against the nape of her neck, like the way a moth would beat its wings, or how you would tickle someone with a feather. A little, raven black feather.

His pale, occasionally speckled flesh dominated hers. And even though Queen Elizaveta desperately wanted to move, because her legs had fallen asleep to the point of unabashed numbness, The King wouldn't allow it.

He sent a shiver down her spine with those fat, soft lips she fell in love with all those years ago. They had left a dreamy half-kiss against her shoulder.

His cheek crushed a small part of her collection of golden-brown hair. When she would try to move, he pulled at her scalp.

"Roderich-"

"Uhg." In his dream, she must have been some sort of heavily decorated earth goddess, with rose petals for eyelashes and lips. Her vine-like lady fingers engulfed his face gently while her eyes, so full of_ his_ world, breathed new and heavenly life into his aching chest.

"Roderich!"

His hard blue eyes opened slowly. "Hng."

"Roderich, for God's sake, you're crushing me."

"Oh-" The King pulled away and kissed The Queen's beautiful rosy cheek with a drop of confusion. "I'm so sorry, Darling. Why didn't you push me off of you?"

"I could hardly move at all. I woke up and you were clamped around me."

They were facing one another now, in the ocean of sheets The King had turned into a violent sea by twisting around the covers. Those grotesque, frothy crests smelled like both of them.

"I'm sorry." King Roderich moved towards his night stand and put on his little, serious spectacles, as if analyzing a crime scene. But all he found was an upset woman with part of her hair tangled into a crow's nest. "Oh, Darling. Was that me?"

A set of fingers evaluated her tresses.

"I'm sorry. I'm surprised you didn't elbow me in the chest."

Queen Elizaveta simply sat up with her brilliant white night gown wrinkling around her.

"Elizaveta, please. I'd have the entire kingdom hate me before I'd let you."

"I know, Roderich." Her voice was seeking a place outside the window, in the sunshine. Maybe even buried somewhere inside her flower buds and rose bushes, with the white rabbits and their ruby red eyes.

"I don't hate you."

The King cleaned his glasses on the old fabric of his night gown, which was somewhat thread barren and bruised. Elizaveta could make out the outline of his chest, and even some of those dark spots that covered his body. But only occasionally.

He was spotted like a leopard on his right shoulder.

"Well, if you don't hate me, what's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her answer held some electricity from the lightning shock that delivered it. "I'm just sort of sore. That's all."

"Well-" And for a moment, King Roderich looked like a child trying to come up with solutions to problems that were too big to solve right now. "Well…How about when we finally get a moment of free time together, we go to that little house across the country—the one I bought for you a while ago."

"Roderich, since when do you get free time? If you got fifteen consecutive seconds of relaxation strung together…" Queen Elizaveta rose up her head into something of a tilt. But she wasn't looking at her husband. Those furtive disasters were staring into the hard light of the morning, rolling around on their floor from the window's opened curtains.

"We find time to sleep, don't we?"

"Maybe you do. I just lay awake with my thoughts shouting between my ears." Then The Queen, in slow motion, flipped her half of the distraught sea over and touched one foot—then the other—onto that unforgiving marble floor. "You know the fall is coming when your toes freeze the moment they touch the ground. My whole body feels sore."

"I was serious about what I said."

"What did you say?"

"We'll go to our little house in the country-" Roderich moved through the mangled sheets and through the silence ruined sometimes by the fabric bending and yelling under his weight. "I'm serious." The two were close again. "I'm The King. If I say the whole day stops, it stops."

There was some more brutal sunlight and a couple of birds shouting a conversation in song.

"You can't stop time, Roderich. Somebody, somewhere, somehow has a stack of papers for you to read."

"Darling, I can stop time. It just takes some trickery."

Silence.

"Elizaveta, do you love me at all?"

"Of course I love you. I love you more than all of them roped together. I just hate that crown you have on your head. But—I'm just sore. I have to go outside and get some breakfast. I have to…"

But Elizaveta forgot what she was going to say and left the room, without casting her benevolent gaze once to The King.

A week later she was crying secretly in the parlor. The whole damn place smelled like a library.

Some of the servants had caught her face as she walked quickly down the hallway. With the upset nearly boiling over from her eyelids and wetting her lashes right then. And now, she was stuffed into a corner, with her dress collecting the cracking paint, trying to stifle the upset to silence. Even in her own home. Even in her own kingdom.

Something was killing her. It was this acidic black emotion that took root in her heart and grew into her esophagus upward, like an ugly purple sunflower. The only thing that helped was standing outside in her tiny flower box, making wishes on the dead butterflies that were eaten by those awful black birds.

The Queen spit up a few bluish petals.

And then the door softly opened.

And Queen Elizaveta was taken softly by Gilbert's pair of ruby red eyes.

"Hey, you shouldn't be in here, crying like that." Then the door shut behind him. "If you keep gasping in all that dusty air you'll get sick."

The Queen, looking like a plain woman, tripped over the sob that had popped in her throat. She was trying to put the brakes on something rolling down hill too fast to stop. Like a boulder. Or maybe even a cart full of boulders.

With a movement of the hand, she called him closer. While Gilbert approached, she coaxed her legs into standing up, with her dress spitting back out all the dusty wall bits it had collected.

Then she tugged him in closely and weaved her tears into the threads of his shirt.

Each and every one of those drops of salt water must have been worth more than a diamond of the same size. Yet, the Queen poured them so freely into his ill-fitting uniform.

"Oh, Gilbert."

Each of the words must have been worth ten diamonds themselves.

"I can't tell you—I just—" Something had snapped. Maybe one of her golden vocal chords. "I don't understand how it came to be this way. I used to be able to do what I liked. I could go outside into town, alone. I could go into the woods or my favorite meadow full of flowers without six to seven guards following me. If I don't—" Gasp. "How could I be Queen? How could this happen to me—of all people?"

"I don't know Elizaveta."

There were so many reasons he could have named.

"I think The King simply loves you."

"I know he does." One of those dainty hands wiped her face, nearly scratching the red from the top of her nose. And then, just for a moment, an odd sort of light crossed over her expression. Like a wicked idea she had to keep locked up in the mangled cage inside her chest, made from her pure white ribs. It passed from her in an instant. And then, with a single breath, she pulled herself back together, as if someone was pushing her guts back into place by pulling on the ribbons of her corset.

And there again was The Queen.

Her fingers adjusted Gilbert's collar.

"Bring me a piece of cake, won't you?"

Their eyes met up in the chaos forming like a galaxy between them.

"You can have one too, if you like."

"Of course, My Queen."


	4. Chapter 4

Gilbert woke up to the soft sirens singing inside his head. All those deadly women with their emerald green eyes and long, golden-brown hair.

The light from his windows was intense. It shone down like an unkind ray that tanned and burned whatever parts of him happened to be placed under it. It dried out his mouth every time.

Gilbert's property was a small, destitute thing dropped, like a rotting crate, into a small field of flowers just before the expansive and terrifying forest began. It was almost as though some abstract artist set a stripe of white and a stripe of black just next to one another. That happy green patch of orange and yellow blooms contrasted sharply with the tall, dark trees that stood what seemed to be only inches apart. One section of the landscape had hardly any shadows at all, except for the man-made ones. Then, the other part was all shadow and reeked of a foreboding warning to stay exactly where you were.

He often wondered what Queen Elizaveta would say.

Would she be surprised at the poverty? Take it into her pretty, bubble gum pink heart and realize that her husband never really paid anyone? Or would she run those wonderful, dainty, callous-free fingers along the ancient wood, and set her pretty, perfect feet into that little ocean of dandelions and marigolds and say, "Oh, Gilbert. What a nice place you live in."

Maybe it would be a mixed reaction of both.

Gilbert forced his bones into moving. Because again, he had to walk into town to serve the King and Queen.

It was possible, when he first started, to be one of those live-in servants. Share a room with another unfortunate bastard and never, ever get to leave that enormous castle and its dusty air full of whispers and small miseries. The pay was less. But they covered your room and meals and sometimes even your clothing. But usually, that was considered an extra expense. The servants were expected to use whatever money they received after all the taxation and quartering was done.

Once, for some reason, Gilbert had seen the servant's hall. In some places, there were whole rooms and in others, small beds that were just lined up next to one another, about a foot between each of them. When Gilbert had poked his eyes through the door to one of these rooms—this one resembling a former dining hall—he noticed it looked like an abandoned hospital. But it was different. Because everyone had placed their small set of worldly belongings beneath their beds and all the sheets had been freshly organized.

There had to be some type of honor code. An unspoken promise back and forth between everyone not to steal one another's shit.

Gilbert forced his bones into moving. Because again, he wanted to go sinking slowly back into dreamland delirium, while being held and gently sunburned by morning light.

No one wanted to steal from an empty orange crate anyway.

It was better out here.

Just for ten more minutes, Gilbert gave into his lazy unholy side and dipped himself into unconscious consciousness. Where lovely women made out of flowers lived and maybe, just sometimes, he owned a real and honest bed.


	5. Chapter 5

Somehow, through a series of dream-like events, Gilbert had ended up in the King's tower. It was at the very top, small and circular, with a telescope pointed downwards from the window.

They had lead him up here—The King and one of those guards, walking up each and every step with a form of obsessive compulsive practice. Gilbert felt as though he had been thrown into a moment that had been rehearsed a hundred times over. Like being tossed onto a stage on the middle of a play and forced to perform.

The King was sitting across from him, dressed in black and white with that imposing, golden crown poised upon his head. Along with the cheap spectacles he had been wearing the last five years. He would have wanted to wear the same pair for ten years, but the old ones broke.

King Roderich leaned forward. And his lower lip slid beneath his concealed front teeth.

"You're not in any trouble, Gilbert."

The castle's uniform felt like a straight jacket. Or maybe, even a table strap.

The King picked up his favorite scalpel.

"I just wanted to ask you about Elizaveta."

It was also golden.

And just for a moment, a slip of concerned blue eyes found a way to meet Gilbert's rubies. But the scene dissipated quickly. A drop of rain turning to steam inside of someone's bonfire.

The King cleared his throat. "I ask you this in confidence. Out of concern for Elizaveta. Or—_The Queen_. She hasn't been herself lately, and I thought—" His gaze fell into the floor and bounded up once again. "I thought you might have some ideas. Has she said anything to you?"

Gilbert gave a hearty shrug, while trying to seem like a neutral party between both of them. He couldn't show the King anything past his plastered-on poker face. Especially not that The Queen had taken a small petal of her rose bud heart and set it delicately in his palm. So he could go home and press it. Even if he didn't have any books.

"Well. She probably wants to go outside. But she hasn't said anything. The Queen likes to be in her garden. That's all. Sometimes she stares out of windows."

King Roderich himself took all this in while looking at the small, square window that held his thin, golden telescope.

It must have been the most expensive thing in the room.

"Doesn't she know she can go out any time she likes?"

She said without all the guards.

But Gilbert couldn't possibly.

"Well." Those heavy glass eyes came back to stare at Gilbert. "I suppose I'll have to take her on vacation soon. Or at least put more windows in the castle. Thank you, Gilbert. You're free to go now."

"Yes, My King." The servant bowed just like The King told him to the first time they met. And he left the tower, to walk in uneven, unrehearsed steps all the way back to ground floor, nearly tripping at least three times.

The dungeons must have been near there. It fit, with all the brick and the dank smell of stagnant water.

Elizaveta stole Gilbert the next day. She sat him outside amongst her rabbits and the flowers they ate. As well as the scraps of the remaining butterflies and the nasty, large black birds that sat along the garden walls.

"I wish those fucking birds would go away."

The Lady's language doth surprise the foolish slave.

"_What?_"

"_I said_, I wish those _fucking _birds would go away. _They're ugly_. I swear I can smell one of them from here. It's oppressive enough to drown out the scent of my roses. _Can't you smell it?_"

Gilbert didn't really know what to say. So instead of speaking at all, he sent his attention hiding along the folds of The Queen's ornate gown. Today, it was one of neon white lace and bright pink ribbon. The sort that shined like an eyesore beneath sunlight. The entire affair made her look like a plastic imitation of one of the blooms kept against the death grey wall.

The woman visibly pouted.

Then she dug into Gilbert with her mischievous green eyes, pregnant with illicit activity. It hung at the edge, where her lovely red lips met together; just at that tiny space in between them. And whatever this horrible thing was, it tried to open her mouth wider. Like an earthquake trying to break apart stone.

Her wild woman heart and her school girl brain were having it out.

"Stop looking at me that way."

The Queen's little pink tongue poked out.

But she shot her eyes into the rose bushes.

"Gilbert, come here for a second."

"_What?_" He was standing about five feet away.

"Don't be stupid. Come here for a second."

The servant took a step closer.

"_No, dumbass_. I said _come here_."

"You're the dumbass. _I'm already standing right here_."

"Don't call me a dumbass. I'm The _Goddamn_ Queen."

They were whispering for some reason.

"Now come closer."

"_Queen_ Dumbass, your husband has a telescope pointed right at the garden in that stupid tower."

Elizaveta slapped him and realized what he said. And then, with her dainty lady fingers, she covered her recently foul mouth. Those eyelashes spread as if an explosion happened inside them.

"I'm so sorry." Now those sweet, vine-like digits came to the freshly injected blush in Gilberts' ripe cheek. The tragedy came back onto her face and the woman was trapped in a limbo of whether to run or scream.

"You can't tell him I told you." He stood as they normally would in her garden while Elizaveta struggled like a doll that had just become sentient to act and look like a doll. Her face went through all the emotions she had not yet experienced.

"He—He—" She looked freshly slapped herself. "How did you—How did you find out? Did you—Did you—"

A heavy gulp that should have been full of Vodka, but wasn't.

"My Lady. Your husband's worried about you."

"So he—" A breath full of fire, but bound up in a whisper. "He asked you about me? _What did you tell him?_"

"That you wanted to go outside."

The petals in Gilbert's hand felt fragile as glass, thin as your pinky nail. But there was so much honesty in his face and genuine, tangible concern that The Queen allowed him to keep them. Because he told her the truth, even if he called her a dumbass.

The heart break came after the numbness of shock. And Gilbert felt her translucent pink petals quiver like fragile, fallen leaves. Now crisp and brown.

"I have to—"

Her normal voice came out from a throat that tasted like salt.

"Thank you, Gilbert."

And The Queen went back inside, leaving the servant to project the other half of the lie they were holding together. But Queen Elizaveta dropped her end of the cloth and made the mask look like it had a stroke.

Eventually Gilbert gave up and went inside too.


	6. Chapter 6

There was The _Goddamn_ Dumbass Queen, lying on the smaller half of Gilbert's dusty mattress.

Mischief, like her golden hair, flowed like a river around her all the way to her pink knees dappled with grass stains. Gilbert practically jumped out of his own flesh at the sight of her. Not only was this enough for a scandal, but he could be looking at a full on beheading with lovely King Roderich holding the axe.

Elizaveta's dark brown lashes were all arranged perfectly like that of a porcelain doll's. In fact, the entire woman looked like a ceramic mold. Like someone dropped a fake queen on the other side of Gilbert's exhaustion as a horrible joke. But that wasn't possible. The soft rising and falling of her chest disproved that ridiculous theory, along with the slight glow that rose up out of her pink cheeks and rosy mouth.

Gilbert had seen it a thousand times. Elizaveta would light up like a neon sunflower when someone dropped a little happy into her eyes.

One of her delicate, soft, unbroken hands pressed into his shirt material.

Then the woman stretched like a cat and opened her lime green eyes. They met up with the peasant's ruby reds in a violent, cosmic collision.

"Elizaveta, what in the _hell_ are you doing here?"

Gravity ruined her brows, and there was silence that bore the weight of her royalty. She looked into his poorly thatched roof. "I knew you would say that."

The man just noticed the pregnant backpack near her traveling shoes.

"I'm sorry to involve you in this, but I can't go alone…" There was a space in between her plump lips. Like a gasp for air or maybe even dust amplified by the morning light. It brought out the crinkled up gold in her eyes. "You just seemed the best."

"_The best for what?_"

Getting quartered?

Pause. "Well…for an adventure. I guess. I have to go…after what you told me." Those priceless green gems buried themselves into the dirt floor. And then, there was that dignified, lady-like grasp for words. But not even just words. Eloquent words. Beautiful words. Words you'd expect a queen to use after such a weighty pause.

It weighed as much as a silver anvil.

"Gilbert, please tell me you'll escape with me. A small escape. You're my only friend and I have no chance without someone who—" The unborn syllables were all tugged an inch back into her throat by the vocal chords that made them. "Well. You're street smart; you're strong. If I have to wait for Roderich to take me away from here, then I'll…"

A gulp.

This woman couldn't understand the Herculean task she was asking Gilbert to perform.

"It won't be forever."

She barely looked like a peasant.

"Just a while so I can get my sanity back."

With her clean, brilliant, aristocratic white hands.

"For my own happiness."

Or her gorgeous, untangled, silken hair.

"And after I'm well again, and Roderich appreciates me more—"

Or all of the pristine outfits she must have packed in that bag.

"I'll declare my presence again. And I'll return to the kingdom."

Her eyes pleaded.

When Gilbert didn't say anything, because his mouth was dry and his mind was in the middle of a civil war and his heart threw the brakes on a full scale cardiac arrest, Elizaveta said more.

"Gilbert, I'll do anything. But I can't stay. My husband—I saw the telescope. At first I couldn't believe it. _You saw me_. But when he went to sleep, I snuck up to that awful, dank tower and I _saw_ it. That expensive, _little_ telescope pointed right at my garden! I looked through it. Because it was still dusk and I could see—And, and… He's probably been watching us the entire time."

The two were looking right at one another now.

"I can't go one living this way. Not without a few weeks to clear my head. _Do you know how unfair that is?_ It feels like a prison; not a marriage. But instead of chains—_That man_—he wraps around me so tightly I can't move. Please do this for me, Gilbert. Any demand you want to make consider it finished. Just for this one thing. _Please._"

Then the background noise of birds and nature moved back in. Through their voiceless dialogue composed of hard-hitting stares.

Gilbert wished he had something of great value to ask, to move him to helping her. But there was no imprisoned wife in some neighboring kingdom. There were no magical powers an evil wizard stole from him. There was nothing he wanted except maybe a better house and that was a dumb way to waste a wish.

So Gilbert just said: "No one's going to believe you're a peasant. They'd probably recognize you right away."

Now he was looking into the dirt, mouth stuffed with a desert.

"I know. That's why I need your help."

Pause. "If I help you run away, they'll probably execute me. Did you think of that?" Gilbert's voice had a sharper edge than he intended. And for a moment, he felt badly, even though this entire thing was ridiculous and The Queen should just take her stupid ass home. But she looked so hopeful and bright. Like a child with her big green eyes in desperation for something she obviously couldn't get herself.

Again, Gilbert's rough, manly hands were filled with her delicate glass petals. He wasn't sure whether he should roll up his fingers or set them gently into a rich lacquered box.

Or hand them right back and run, because this was absurd.

Instead, Gilbert set them in his shirt pocket and stood up. "They're going to know you're here if I don't show up at the castle today. So you wait while I decide what to do. I'm sure the king will put me to work."

Gilbert caught that lovely field of small yellow flowers. Then the ugly mess of trees that stood like a fortress before it.

"You better not stay here either. They're going to search every square inch of the kingdom once King Roderich finds out you're missing for good. So find a spot in the forest over there and stay put until I get back and we know it's safe. Take all your stuff too."

"Thank you, Gilbert." The Queen got to her feet; the silken night gown she wore shined like a cursed golden fleece. "I was worried you'd call me a dumbass again and force me to go back. But the fact that you'll even consider doing this is the reason you're my favorite."

Her slender arm took up the swollen sack lying on the ground.

"I'll wait in the woods until you come back. Make a noise like a bird when the coast is clear. But not too good. I might not be able to tell the difference."

Then the woman went out into the sun and walked across that little lake of golden flowers. She shined like a goddess and her light disappeared once she found a way into those nasty, dark woods. The way a firefly clicks off and on.

He could have sworn he saw her eyes looking at him through the gaps in the trees.

Then Gilbert made his way to the Kingdom.


	7. Chapter 7

No one had even noticed that Gilbert had arrived a few minutes late.

He wasn't the one they were looking for.

The entire castle seemed convinced that Queen Elizaveta must have had magic powers. That at a snap of those lovely, slender fingers she could shrink her body down to the size of a doll and go running under murky glasses and hiding in the bushes of her lush, green garden.

The King could hardly believe she had gotten away somehow. You could see the faulty reasoning short circuiting around his mind. The Queen didn't know the area. And certainly, she couldn't have gotten far. Maybe she's still hiding inside a closet somewhere, as an unkind trick. As a way to passively-aggressively prove a point.

Well my darling, I still love you! I love you enough to force my servants to look in ridiculous places for you! Like Kitchen cupboards and old jars, and behind slender vases!

Maybe they missed something, My Love! Please show yourself now, won't you?

But Elizaveta was nowhere to be found. That was because she had stuffed herself in between a series of dark trees near Gilbert's very own little field of yellow flowers. And she used her magic powers then, to avoid boredom and keep the spiders and snakes away.

The King nervously polished his glasses, as if making them shine any brighter would reveal an answer. Like a stingy genie hiding inside the frame of his spectacles.

He stared intensely out the window of his tower.

One of those awful blackbirds swooped through the light blue sky.

"Gilbert, did Elizaveta say anything to you? She seemed upset—" There must have been at least two cold droplets of sweat, etching a path into the sides of his face. The King's mouth hung with frustrated wonder. Because he should have known where she was.

There was some mix of anger at her audacity and desperate, cardinal longing for her safe return. Like he wanted to choke her for being so reckless, but would embrace her tenderly and forgive every one of her sins if she walked through that door at this second.

"No, My King. Queen Elizaveta said nothing to me. Although, I did notice that something seemed to be the matter."

The stiff cotton of castle talk filled up his mouth.

"Do you have any idea what it could have been? I mean—I know that she wanted to take a vacation somewhere, but this is so unlike her."

"My Lord, the Lady did not say anything else but what I've already reported."

The cotton seemed to get stuck in The King's mouth as well. He bit one side of his cheek and chewed until it bled. Those spectacles sat back on the bridge of his nose, but the compulsive nervous ticks went on like a series of tired seizures. He must have been thinking of all the ways those filthy peasants could harm her.

Because The Queen couldn't simply sip tea in the center of town.

Surely, she was strapped to some muscular brute's back, with her fragile lovely wrists tied together in heavy rope.

"Gilbert, I have nothing for you to do here. So, for today, I'm going to send you home. On your way back, please look for Elizaveta…I'm certain she'll talk to you if she spots you in town. She has an odd sort of trust in you, I think."

The cold sweat translated to a fever.

"Of course, My King. If I see her, I'll be sure to bring her back immediately."

The next step was to dress Elizaveta like a boy.

Gilbert thought of it on the way over this morning.

Maybe then, she could run around town for a few days until she figured out peasant life sucked. Then she would go back to the golden birdcage looming over the entire world. Even though the gold was gilded and slowly rusted from the inside out.

Those ruby red eyes would hardly wear a speck of surprise if he found her sitting in that field of flowers, making little crowns of dandelions or something. Wearing her night gown like she did all her pearls and silk.

Gilbert bought a pair of scissors and a long stretch of fabric.

When he returned to his pocket of royal sunshine, he made a sound like a bird. And the Queen came out, like a shy little fawn before a set of potential wolves. But her pricey eyes caught Gilbert, and they sat in his shack together. The scissors and the fabric set between them, laid out the way you'd drop a rotting corpse.

"I'm going to dress you up like a boy."

"Okay. So what are the scissors for?"

The silence made a ball inside Gilbert's stomach. It was small and felt like a knot.

Elizaveta's fingers ran through her hair.

"Does it really have to come to that?"

"Look, you're the one who wanted my help anyway." Gilbert's cheeks were pigmented in raspberry jam. "No one would believe you're a boy with hair like that. And no one would believe the Queen would go running around town in drag. This is the best way."

"How short are you going to cut it?"

Gilbert pointed to his own white hair. It was manly and rough.

"No. There must be some kind of compromise."

The shiny silver scissors gleamed inside the afternoon light, as if they had an opinion too.

"Maybe to here." His fingers pointed to Elizaveta's jaw. "I've seen boys with long hair before. I think you can get away with that."

And then, just for a second, Elizaveta seemed to consider how ridiculous this all was, as if she was waking up from an idiotic dream. Her green eyes caught the excited shine of those brand new scissors. The ones Gilbert bought for the sole purpose of taking her hair.

"Well, can you at least make it look nice?"

"Duh."

She trusted him.

So the woman turned around and showed Gilbert every last one of her golden brown strands. It all fell to the floor and collected there, looking like a basket full of roses.

Gilbert took a section with his dirty hand and cut it short. The scissors hesitated when he had to do it again, but Elizaveta never turned around and threatened him. It must have actually been alright.

"I was reading while you were gone."

Snip. The servant's tongue was stuck in between his lips. If he didn't make some sort of stupid face, how else would The Queen know he was concentrating? Even if she couldn't see him.

"I think I know where I want to go."

Snip.

"What the hell are you talking about? I thought you were going to stay here."

Snip.

"Since when did I say that?"

Snip.

"If I stay here, Roderich will find me. I'm sure anyone who's worked at the castle will recognize my face."

"Once you get sweaty and dirty it shouldn't be a problem."

"I'd rather be sweaty and dirty somewhere else. I haven't even told you where I want to go yet."

Snip.

"Fine. Where do you want to go?"

"I want to go a town over; I visited there once. I don't think anyone will recognize me, since Roderich and I barely go anywhere. Especially if I dress up as a boy. And—"

Snip.

Elizaveta's lips rolled together while her face hardened to serious stone. The woman was sloshing strong alcohol inside her mouth. In between her teeth. To get a taste for it.

She forgot what she wanted to say. The vodka sterilized it as it sat one her tongue.

"I guess reading that book reminded me of it."

Snip.

"What did you bring with you anyway?"

"Money, books, clothes, necessities."

Snip. They were getting to the last few sections. Most of the Queen's hair sat in miscellaneous piles about the ground. Diamonds in a bucket of shit.

"You know you can't wear anything nice. Especially if you're going to be seen with me."

"Maybe I can just dress _you_ in something nice."

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

Elizaveta's beauty sat on Gilbert's dirt. The Queen turned around and collected up the pieces of her former mane and started to spin them into a braid. The entire time, Gilbert stared at her new face, still beautiful but much more boyish. Her hair worked like a frame now and Gilbert was impressed with his work, even if any professional hair dresser would say it looked like a toddler did it.

"You'll stay with me, won't you?" Elizaveta pulled out a ribbon from her night gown, the way you'd slowly unravel a sweater.

"Well, it seems like they'll kill me either way. Cutting your hair like that was probably enough to lock me in the dungeon for at least one hundred years, so I've really got nothing more to lose."

"Don't say that. I won't let them kill you." Elizaveta looked Gilbert straight in the Goddamn face. "I Won't. Especially when this was my idea. I'll tell The King the truth. I just need a break."

The ends of her ruined hair curled onto her cheeks.

And Gilbert gulped down every last one of her feelings. Until there was a sigh and a wave of apathy. And he said, "Alright Elizaveta. But we'll have to leave tonight."

And The Queen glowed like caramelized sunshine, with her butchered hair in a braid with a bow at the end. It sat in her hand like a holy relic.

Gilbert told her to go back into the woods while he came up with a plan.


	8. Chapter 8

The Queen wrapped up her chest and stole her servant's clothing.

Now they were standing just outside Gilbert's meager house, the stars glowing above them and the grass cool. The moon lit up the sky too. It shone like a huge lantern in the dark of the woods, and you couldn't see who was holding the thing.

Despite the night time, Gilbert could see Elizaveta's face. Even with her hair chopped off, and her body made up like a boy's, she still looked like the Queen. It lit up her face and reflected in those jewel green eyes.

They must have been more valuable than the entire kingdom itself.

The same kingdom Roderich was going to burn down to find them.

Gilbert suddenly realized all of his responsibilities.

He reached out and held her delicate hand. It was untouched by the world and smooth like a stone. His must have felt horribly rough by comparison.

"Are you ready?" The servant asked. But it didn't really matter. As soon as they escaped the woods they would be equal. Hopefully everyone else would know that too.

"Yes, I am. Are you ready?"

"Yeah. Let's go."

So the two, intertwined by the fingers, walked into the field and into the forest, careful not to make too much noise.


End file.
